


Heat

by Ichiro



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:54:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ichiro/pseuds/Ichiro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing Blake's 7 episode, in Blank Verse</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat

HEAT

 

    1. VILA.



 

 **VILA is in a room on the Liberator.**  
  
 _Vila:_  
This is not a good place for a thief.  
There is nothing here to steal.  
I cannot steal from my colleagues  
(I would if I could)  
Because they have nothing.  
I cannot steal from the Federation  
Because they have everything and they know me on sight.  
I cannot steal from even myself  
Because I have already taken everything I have  
And it wasn’t worth very much when I took it in the first place.  
At least I can get drunk.  There is everything on the ship I want and all of it is free.  
Which means I cannot steal even that.  
I am somewhat oppressed by my surroundings.  
  
2.  VILA, DAYNA.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
What are you doing up here,  
Little man?  
  
 _Vila:  
                                                                          _ Counting my wealth.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
That shouldn’t take you very long.  
  
 _Vila:_  
It hasn’t.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
It isn’t just you that commences to irritate me.  The whole ship irritates me.  
I am oppressed by the heavy lights which do not increase  
No matter how full we charge the batteries.  
The colour of the walls is not to my taste.  
I am oppressed by the power of this ship with which we do nothing.  
Our computers know everything and we do not use them.  
Why not?  
We should be in action.  
  
 _Vila:  
                                                                           _ Action?  
I’m not that oppressed myself.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
You are a little man.  
  
 _Vila:_  
At least you have something to keep you going.  
You want to kill SERVALAN.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
Yes.  I will kill SERVALAN.  
  
 _Vila:_  
She has more sense than to meet us again.  
She’d be bored to death too.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
AVON is planning something, I know.  CALLY –  
CALLY, she says he has become more introverted than ever!  
He is like the corner of the street which you do not ever reach  
Because your house is only half-way down  
And you stop there and look up and see only  
Where the street turns away from you  
And there are streetlights behind the corner  
But not so that you can see  
And you are glad to reach home.  
He is brooding on something this time.  
  
 _Vila:_  
How can you tell?  
  
 _Dayna:_  
I think I will go and look for him  
  
 _Vila:_  
Perhaps you should try the leisure area.  
That is what I think.  
  
4.  AVON.  
  
 **AVON is in the leisure area, which looks very much like a small bowling alley.  One hand rests on ORAC.**  
  
5.  AVON, DAYNA.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
Well, well, well.  
Here you are.  
  
 _Avon:_  
If you came here to tell me that  
You have wasted your trip.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
You cannot play games with me.  
Try as you like, you cannot play games with me.  Remember  
That, AVON.  
  
 _Avon:_  
Remember this, DAYNA,  
We are none of us on this ship playing games.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
I don’t believe you.  
  
 _Avon:_  
It is nice to know I have the trust of my crew.  
  
 **They grin at each other, without humour.**  
  
 _Dayna:_  
It is true you have something planned.  
I want to know what.  
  
 _Avon:_  
Truth is a relative commodity.  
  
 _Dayna:_  
Stop it, AVON.  
  
 **AVON flicks ORAC’S switch.**  
  
 _Orac:_  
Greetings Dayna One Two Three  
Something can be learned from me.  
Seek much further, you shall find  
Something greater than the Federation will be preying on your mind.  
  
 _Dayna:  
                                                                  _ That  
Is not very helpful.  
  
 _Avon:_                  
                                        

                   ORAC,  
Tell her what you told me.  I  
Would not want it to be felt  
That I was keeping secrets.

_Dayna:_  
Of course.

_Orac:_  
Power comes, power goes  
All things soon decline  
One thing I know that never fails:  
Power propels us all

Power comes, power goes  
No one knows where to  
If the source and terminus were found  
That would be most interesting.

_Avon:_  
ORAC has discovered a power source.  
We are going to get it.

_Dayna:_  
Is that ORAC’s idea or is  
That your idea?

_Avon:  
                                                                      _ Now whose idea –

6.  AVON, DAYNA, CALLY.

_Cally:_  
You two come onto the bridge.  
There is something you should see.

7.  ALIEN GRAVARR AND HIS SERVANT.

**We cannot see Gravarr the alien nor his servant as the camera peers over their shoulders.  They are staring into Gravarr’s tunable Time/Space viewifier, which is focussed on the Liberator as it hangs in space on the end of a long piece of black cotton.  We can see their alien hands as they point.**

_Servant:_  
Master, it is as you promised.  
See where come the striding heroes.  
I can see them on the viewer.

_Gravarr:_  
That’s right.

_Servant:  
                                                                 _ Shall we lay the trap yet?

_Gravarr:_  
No, you fool, the time’s not ready  
We must wait yet for - **the others**.

_Servant:_  
Yes, **the others**.

**Gravarr’s alien servant adjusts the ariel to pick up another part of space on the Time/Space viewifier.  We see three Federation battlecruisers.  Doom chords.**

7.  AVON, CALLY, DAYNA, TARRANT, VILA

**They are on the Liberator bridge, which looks much like the front room of a moderately affluent suburban house.  The part of Zen is taken by an irritating man standing outside the French windows with a goldfish bowl on his head.**

_Vila:_  
What is it?  
Where have we come to?

_Tarrant:_  
We’re not here by accident.

_Dayna:_  
They have a right to know

_Tarrant:_  
They?  What is this they?  
What is this word that comes out of your lips, DAYNA?  
Are you not with us?  I  
See you standing in this room  
But I do not know which side I see you standing on,  
As if the walls were mirrored  
And there were a hundred DAYNAs.  
Are you with us or  
Are you with him?

_Cally:_  
We’ve been in space too long.  
We’re overwrought.

_Avon:_  
I’ve always thought things are better  
Out in the open.

_Tarrant:_  
So you can see people  
Before they leap on your back.  Is that it,  
AVON?

_Vila:_  
He’s been brooding.  I  
Wouldn’t mind, but  
While you were gone  
He brooded at me and it was painful to watch.

_Tarrant:_  
Forgive me.  
Aha  
I had always thought we were a team.  
I thought we struck as a team.  
All equal, that was our strength.  
Have you been planning with him,  
DAYNA, alone?  
Is there something I should know?  
If there is nothing to unite  
The team then we are weak.

_Avon:_  
One thing will always unite you  
Your ignorance.  
Find strength in that.

_Tarrant:_  
You do not include yourself in that?

_Avon:  
                                                                     _ Well now  
If you were not so ignorant  
You would not need to ask.

_Dayna:_  
AVON claims that ORAC  
Has discovered a power source.

_Cally:_  
What sort of power source?

_Avon:_  
There I will admit to some limitation.  
You had better ask ORAC.

_Tarrant:_  
Bravo.

_Zen:_  
Destination achieved,  
We are in orbit  
Anything you want  
Just have to shout for it.

**The Liberator crew fan out to examine their destination through the French windows.  It is a small metal planetoid.**

_Cally:_  
Where are we, ZEN?  
It’s not a planet.

_Dayna:_  
It looks artificial.

_Zen:_  
It is a sun.

_Dayna:_  
That’s not a sun.

_Tarrant:_  
Is that a sun?

_Avon:_  
Where is the system to this sun, ZEN?

_Zen:_  
We are within the system of this sun.

_Avon:_  
State time of entry of sun’s system.

_Zen:_

_Avon:_  
Comply with request.

_Zen:_  
Cannot comply with request.

_Avon:_  
State reason for failure  
To comply with request.

_Zen:_  
Cannot comply with the request  
We did not enter into it  
If you wish to go elsewhere  
State destination, speed and orbit  
State destination, speed and orbit.

_Tarrant:_  
ZEN, how can we be in the system  
And not have entered it.  
It does not make much sense to me.

_Avon:_  
ZEN cannot comply  
With our request  
Because his sensors are feeding him information that he is unable to interpret  
In the normal way.  He is like  
A blind man asking questions of God.  
The blind man asks, “What is that in the sky?”  
And God says, “A bird”  
But the blind man still cannot know  
What it is that is a bird.  
Deformity is identical with us  
But we do not know we are deformed  
And for the deformed the comparisons are more cruel.  
We do not know what is out there.

_Vila:_  
Great.  
Let’s keep it that way.  
Let’s go and rob the Federation.

_Avon:_  
 _(Aside, sotto voce)_ At least deformity to a computer is nothing  
It is a hurdle to be overcome  
It is the vacuum of information.  
Greater input overleaps it  
And that is not their responsibility.  
We are shackled to our deformities  
Like we are shackled to our backbones –  
Prisons of flesh.  Our perceptions are not clean joins

_Cally:_  
AVON, I sense a terrible conflict  
Within you.

_Avon:  
(snarls)                                                      _ If I’ve said anything  
It’s that you sense nothing.

_Tarrant:_  
I have a readout from the super-long-distance omnisensual perceptors.  
We have been in this system for 30 by 34 light seconds.

_Vila:_  
30 by 34 light seconds!  This ship  
Isn’t that old.  I’m  
Not that old.

_Dayna:_  
ZEN, state age of LIBERATOR.

_Zen:_  
LIBERATOR multi-dimensional  
Space pursuit vehicle  
Age 30 by 34 light seconds.  
A universe beckons and we can travel it  
State destination, speed and orbit.

_Dayna:_  
You heard it,  
Folks.

_Tarrant:  
                                                              _ But I don’t understand.  
ZEN seems to be saying  
We’ve always been in this system.

_Dayna:_  
Perhaps its gravity net is very widely drawn.  
Perhaps its orbiting moons are on the edge of the known galaxy.  
ZEN is saying he was built in the system of that star.

_Vila:_  
That settles it.  We met them once  
And they weren’t very nice.  They had odd ideas  
About property and said the LIBERATOR  
Was theirs.  It’s not the right company  
For a thief.

_Avon:_  
These are not the builders of  
The LIBERATOR.  This is something else,  
This is power.

_Dayna:_  
You want us to take a look.

_Avon:_  
I want us to take a look.

_Tarrant:_  
If there’s power to be discovered  
I want to be in on it.

_Vila:_  
I don’t mind you taking a look.

_Avon:_  
On the contrary VILA  
You are coming with me.  
TARRANT, you are staying here.  
We may need a fast man for the pick-up.

_Cally:_  
He found out you were good at that  
On that Pleasure-Planet.

_Dayna:_  
He’s been in a bad mood ever since.

**Avon beats a retreat to the door.**

_Avon:_  
Coming?

_Tarrant:_  
Yes.

_Vila:_  
No.

_Avon:_  
Whatever you say  
Gentlemen  
Whatever you say.

8.  AVON, DAYNA, VILA. 

**Avon, Dayna and Vila have beamed down to the artificial planetoid, which does not have a metal surface at all.  They are in a chalkpit.**

_Vila:_  
Perhaps I should go back up.  
Tarrant wasn’t very pleased.  
He might do something reckless.

_Dayna:_  
There doesn’t seem to be anyone  
Around.

_Avon:_  
 _(to his communicator)_                          Orac, which way  
From our location to  
The power source?

_Orac:_       
Power comes, power goes,  
Can you say where from?  
You’re in the midst of wealth galore,  
Enjoy the ambience.

_Dayna:_  
Take your pick.

**Avon starts up the chalky sides.**

9.  ALIEN GRAVARR AND HIS SERVANT.

_Servant:_  
Great Lord, from the ship there’s been a  
Broadcast of directed power.  
Somewhere on the planet’s surface.  
I can’t pinpoint the location.

_Gravarr:_  
Teleport!  As I predicted.

_Servant:_  
I’ll send out a squad to catch them.  
Swiftly shall our best squads catch them.  
Swiftly catch them, swiftly take them,  
Take them, seize them, hold them, bind them,  
Take them and then terrorise them,  
Take them in their holding bindings  
Bold to seize them in their hiding  
Bind them with enseizing fetters  
Fetter them when bound and taken  
Held bound over by our best squads.  
No one can escape our best squads.  
No one can escape our prisons.

_Gravarr:_  
When it is so contact **the others.**

_Servant:_  
Will they fill their parts allotted?

_Gravarr:_  
A carnival it will not be.

10.  SERVALAN, MUTOID 1, MUTOID 2, FEDERATION COMMANDER.

**The crew are on the cardboard bridge of Servalan’s pursuit vessel.  A mutoid scans the horizon on her space probe.**

_Servalan:_  
So tell me, have we yet achieved our contact?

_Mutoid 1:_  
Our object’s found, but nought’s been heard of it.

_Servalan:_  
There must be news, and see you have it so,  
Or I’ll match malachievement to its punishment  
And make sure you’re not neither to be seen.

_Mutoid 1:_  
Yes, Mighty Queen.  We have it in our sights,  
Our objective.

_Servalan:  
_ But yet no communication.

_Mutoid 2:_  
O Mighty Queen, another sensor reading?

_Servalan:_  
Tell me.

_Com’der:  
  _                                                               What else could in this void?

_Mutoid 2:_  
A ship.

_Mutoid 1:_  
                                   I have it not.

_Mutoid 2:_  
                                                                        I have it too.  
‘Tis large.

_Servalan:_  
                                    And well?

_Mutoid 2:_                   
                                                                   ‘Tis very large.  ‘Tis huge.  
Great Queen, meseems me tis the apple of your quest,  
The drain of all your youth, ah, LIBERATOR.

_Com’der:_  
LIBERATOR, here, can it be so?

_Servalan:_  
What would they here?

_Com’der:_               
                                                       ‘Tis not so.  
LIBERATOR?  That airy band of heroes?  
Rebel scum?  What mission are we on,  
Dominatrix?  What errand counts for both,  
Both us and them together?

_Servalan:_  
 _(Aside)_                                                     I feel it so.  
There’s been a caution sitting on my nerves  
An abcess in my shrinking peace of mind.  
 _(To crew)_ Why, power, you fools, raging power.  
I am the Queen of Night.  What else would bring me,  
With engines screaming through the void, blasters at fingertips  
My metal skin proof against night, for this is my ship  
And my ship is me, and that ship mine and all,  
But power, raw unchecked power, power such  
As you wretched cannot in your sloth conceive?  
And where power is, are they, are their grand purpose.  
Oh, but this is still the pollen in the flower.

_Mutoid 1:_  
I have it on scan.: They’re within our sights,  
Sitting targets.  Shall we blast them?  Execute?

_Servalan:_  
You fool!  We do not smash what is within our grasp.

_Com’der:_  
But what we’re after, so may they and all!

_Servalan:_    
You little man, d’you think I’ve come this way  
Bestirred myself and crossed space on a whim?  
Our contacts want and offer.  And that bauble’s the tip.  
Understand me well, Commander.  I want that ship.

11.  TARRANT, CALLY.

**Tarrant and Cally are in the transporter bay.**

_Zen:_         
Information is to be communicated.  
Pursuit ships on the starboard bow.

_Cally:_      
What?

_Tarrant:_  
                 State size and class.

_Zen:_         
Federation super space pursuit  
They seem quite strong with great big guns.  
There’s three of them.

_Tarrant:_  
SERVALAN!

_Cally:_  
We don’t know that.

_Tarrant:_  
We know enough to please me.  Where there’s one  
There’s more, that’s my motto.  
ZEN, destination –

_Cally:  
                                                            _ Stay your hand.  
What is this?

_Tarrant:_           
                                                             We can’t fight them shorthanded

_Cally:_      
Get AVON back up.  
He shall decide.

_Tarrant:_  
I don’t need AVON  
To decide.

_Cally:_      
We all decide together.  
 _(To the communicator.)_ AVON.

12.  AVON.

_Cally:_      
AVON!

_Avon:_     
Not now.

13.  AVON, DAYNA, VILA.

**Avon, Dayna and Vila are pinned in rugged wasteland.  They are being fired upon.**

_Vila:_        
AVON, contact LIBERATOR.  
Get us out of here.  
There’s too many of them

**Dayna shoots at an alien.  Shots are fired back.**

_Avon:_      
I can’t make contact  
With LIBERATOR.

_Dayna:_    
They were on us almost instantly.  
They must have sensors everywhere.

_Avon:_      
So whatever approach we make we have to fight.  
It might as well be now.  
This is as you might say  
A misunderstanding.

**More shots.  Vila ducks.**

_Vila:_        
I don’t think they see  
The error of their ways

_Avon:_      
Break cover, now.

**Dayna fires, they break cover and run in skirmish formation.  They make ground to the next cover and fall, panting.  More shots.  You can tell where the alien shots hit because the ground puffs with smoke.**

_Avon:_      
We have to penetrate their inner sanctum.  
When they see with what we have to negotiate  
They will calm down.

_Dayna:_    
With what do we negotiate?

_Avon:_      
They have power.  
They do not have teleport.  
And they do not have ORAC.

**Avon looks through his space binoculars.**

14.  PRE-ADAMITE ALIEN GUARDS.

**Through Avon’s space binoculars we can see alien squads driving along bumpy trackways in three buggies with huge inflatable wheels.  They are wearing gorilla suits and a thick space armour of jump-suits and plasteel plates.  They each have a big push-off gun and cling to the sides of the buggies as they bump along.**

15.  AVON, DAYNA, VILA.

_Avon:_      
They’re issuing  
From an installation over there.

_Dayna:_    
From their number I think it’s a main base.

_Avon:_      
I’m going to work my way round  
And make contact.  
Cover me.

**Dayna moves to shoot.  Avon intercepts her action.**

_Avon:_  
Distract them only.  
Corpses would spoil a negotiation.

**Dayna shoots.**

16.  VILA, DAYNA.

_Vila:_        
Wait, Avon,  
Can’t I come with you  
Where it’s safe?

_Dayna:_    
I’ve pinned them down  
Behind those rocks.

17.  VILA, DAYNA, PRE-ADAMITE ALIEN.

**A pre-Adamite alien guard looms up behind Dayna and Vila.**

_Dayna_     
Look out, VILA!  
Pop-up holes.

_Vila:_        
They’re turning large guns on us!  
They’re turning large guns on us!

**Dayna and Vila are caught in the cross-fire.  As they stand up to shoot the alien guard, their bodies are caught and twisted by the blast, suspended in mid-air for the moment as the entire screen turns to negative.  Then normal colours are resumed but the picture stops, and the picture is suffused in red until vision is obscured.  There is the scraping of innumerable violins heading down, down, down, down.**

17.  ALIEN GRAVARR AND HIS SERVANT.

_Servant:_  
Master, our initial pickup’s  
Sixty-six per cent completed.

_Gravarr:_  
Then send out the contact signal.  
Whomever is it left uncounted?

_Servant:_  
What we lack’s the one called AVON.

_Gravarr:_  
AVON!  What we have is nothing.

18.  SERVALAN, MUTOID 1, MUTOID 2, COMMANDER.

_Mutoid 1:_  
Great Queen!  I have a signal from the planet!

_Servalan:_ Is’t the code?

_Mutoid 1:_                             
                                             It is!  It is the code!

_Servalan:_  


Then charge our engines to their mighty burst  
And let we loose the ion-breath of dragons,  
The wings of dragons flapping in our tubes,  
Propulsion storm.  Charge!  Charge!  We go  
To meet our vivid destiny.  We go to the planet.

_Mutoid 1:_  


Yes mistress.

19.  TARRANT, CALLY.

_Cally:_        _(To the communicator.)_  
AVON.  
AVON.  
AVON.  
AVON.

_Tarrant:_  
Forget it so.  
There is no AVON.  
AVON does not exist.  
AVON is on that planet  
Or dead or somewhere or lying in a ditch  
Or incapable or mad,  
Whatever, he is no longer in control.  
There is no god-man coming to save you.  
There is no one to save us but me.  
I’m ordering the computer to retreat.  
ZEN –

_Cally:_      
No.

_Tarrant:_  
What, CALLY?

_Cally:_      
We can’t abandon them.

_Tarrant:_  
You can’t raise him.  
He has abandoned you.  
Or rather, he has not  
Because he never took you to be able to abandon you.  
You are not inside his head.  
He does not realise you are alive  
Except that you are around and  
He uses you  
To fight  
As he might use a door to go through  
Or a violin to play  
Or use an enemy to fight with.  It is all action.  
There is no room in AVON’s head  
For anything but AVON.  
It is THE WASTELAND.  
He does not live in the same place as us.

_Cally:_      
You are afraid to match yourself with him  
Aren’t you?  
Because if you failed against him  
You would fail at everything afterwards  
Because it would be the definitive failure.  
It would rock your only idea about the world.

_Tarrant:_  
CALLY –

_Zen:_         
Space ships have moved.

_Tarrant:_  
They’re coming to attack!  Battle stations!  
Raise the force wall!

_Zen:_         
They’re heading for the planet.

_Tarrant:_  
Ignoring us!

_Zen:_         
Do you want anything?  
Shall I perform a task?  
If you want anything  
You only have to ask.

_Cally:_                           
                                                 ZEN, hold position.

_Tarrant:_  
CALLY  
I shall not forget what you said.  
I shall not forget what you said.

20.  SERVALAN.

**Boudoir of SERVALAN.  Chiffon drapes hang down, unseen lighting makes odd colours on the walls.  Is that sound a soporific music or the simple rustle of too much heavy material in the endless vibration of starship engines?  The lady herself, languorous, trails one bare arm down from the bed so her fingertips brush the empty adrenalin glass which rolls on its side on the floor, the last trickle of liquid smearing the linoplast.  Her dress is too tight for comfortable breathing.**

_Servalan:_  
For this have I sold myself, for this room.  
Oh, it is not too bad.  For see you, I am drunk  
Drunk on the rewarding of my crimes - oh, not the booze,  
Nor wealth nor even on the power, though that is good;  
No.  
No.  
Small minds may think it so.  They see me thus,  
Elegant, articulate, unstoppable, grand  
A mistress among pygmies, the skilful rudder  
Of my course, the navigator, onlie sail,  
The ion-engines of my space-craft’s flight  
The plasma fuel, the sheer titanic heat  
Of my own progress out along the stars  
The shattering combustion of my own star’s core  
And thus and thus and all of that is true  
And so they envy.  Let them envy!  That too  
Makes me drunk.  But that is not the whole  
No more than lordship of a single city seems  
To lordship of all space - my power, my rule  
Is but still a morsel of my great delight.  
Where is the pleasure, tell me, in ruling sheep?  
Where do I get my head-buzz amongst fools,  
Where my acid high of ambition when bad words  
And spit is all that those around me seem to know.  
I trample on my government as on flies.  
They are my asteroids.  My soldiers are my fleas,  
My bombs and spacecraft flung sweat from my brow,  
Nail-parings.  I scatter them for charity. I  
Was born to rule.  No pleasure for me there.  
But yet the pleasure I still have is exquisite.  
I drown in sensation, stoke secret raptures  
For myself - when I seem bitterest, inside  
I clutch myself in glee.  
It’s heady, and this helps me strike my blows  
For I can’t see too clearly ‘yond the target.  
And what’s the spring of my intoxication?  
What worm gives spice to my tequila?  I say this  
It is this room.  These heavy subtle drapes  
Heavy as honey from the hive, this ambience  
Of luxury and low lighting, this possession  
Of everything just at my fingertips  
\- It is the mark of all.  It’s what I’ve got.  
It’s ownership.  It’s success.  The mark of all  
My crimes embodied in sheer overpopulation  
Of fulfilled desires.  It is too much.  And that  
Is what that fills me - its gratuity.  I take  
It without needing.  Just me.  This room is like  
A cushion filled to bursting with soft down  
Down plucked intemperately from the beneath  
And underside of living swans, black swans –  
The scream when it is ripped from them still living –  
A crime for no sake but its own, a crime  
Not committed for necessity but luxury  
That is the only sort.  Oh yes, my crimes profit me  
I see they do or they are not full worth it  
Profitless they would condemn my future chances –  
Move or die, I know that.  But the real reward  
Is the act of crime itself, the grossness,  
Over-largeness, over-stuffing, the sheer scale;  
I sin like a glutton eats a bird, the fattest turkey,  
I sin like a gun destroys a wall.  It is all mine.  
And the luxury with which I can reach out  
And kill or maim and not give answer for’t  
Makes me the richest woman in the world.  
This room is owned by me and owed to that.  
This room is my soul. It’s hot in here.  
AVON is near, I can feel it.  LIBERATOR  
The ship I do not have - ORAC, teleport –  
The final bauble, LIBERATOR, my crown’s peak.  
That I must have and then I have it all.  
Then I can take whatever’s left to have.  
AVON, AVON, you poor blind hefty fool  
Can’t you see the

21.  AVON.

**AVON is at the entrance to the installation, which is a metal doorway projecting from a hillock of ground.  He checks.  No one about - he has avoided the Pre-Adamites.  He fishes a clasp-bomb from his pocket and seals it to the doorway.  After the blast the doors slide open and he steals inside.**

**Inside, AVON is in a metal corridor.  With his gun at the ready, he pads down it, occasionally checking behind him.  His stoop of readiness and caution makes him look a much broader man.  He wipes the accidental drool from his mouth with a gloved hand.**

**Something alerts AVON: something is coming.  He dodges behind the metal projection of a vacuum door.**

22.  AVON, PRE-ADAMITE GUARDS.

**AVON hides behind the metal door projection, mouth open in reaction at his narrow escape.  His fine body is tense and ready.  There is the yomping of feet and a double file of Pre-Adamite aliens trot heavily past.  Their beefy leader has a pony tail that jerks up and down in the speed of his passage.**

_Pre-Adamite Guard Leader:_  
Hup hup hup hup  
Hup hup hup hup.

23.  AVON.

**Immediately they have gone AVON swings out of hiding and covers their retreat with his gun, lest any should turn and see him.  He relaxes.  Gun up, he pulls up his wrist with the communicator.**

_Avon:_      
ORAC.

_Cally:_  
AVON.

_Avon:_      
Get me ORAC.

_Cally:_  
Listen to me,  
AVON.

_Avon:_      
Leave the line  
CALLY,  
I want to speak to ORAC.

_Orac:_       
I am  
ORAC.

_Avon:_      
ORAC, am I near it?  
Am I near the power?

_Orac:_       
No nearer now than ‘twas before  
No worse, not far away  
We’re on the node, we’re on the seam  
AVON, it’s here to stay.

_Avon:_      
That’s  
What I expected to hear.  
I can feel it.  
I can feel power in this place  
Like the silent running of water through a planet  
Like an underground river smoothing away at rock  
Until there’s nothing left.  
Water can devour a planet.  
Worlds can die.  
I feel it here.  
I want it.

_Cally:_  
AVON, I must talk to you.

_Avon:_      
( _Pause.)_ If you must.

_Cally:_  
We’ve seen Federation pursuit ships  
Landing on the planet.  
We think it means  
SERVALAN.

_Avon:_      
SERVALAN  
Here, now?  
So it was not an accident.

_Cally:_  
What was not  
An accident?

_Avon:_      
CALLY, I have come here  
Because there is more power here  
Than anywhere else in the universe.  
More energy  
All else is dud and valueless,  
Spoilt gems.  
ORAC told me.  
ORAC could see it  
With his distant sight  
He conjured a vision for me in the night  
And I had to follow.  
But why did he, ORAC, why did he not see it until now?  
ORAC, why not until now?

_Orac:_       
There was a gauze across my sight.  
It was removed.  
I saw the limitless projection of possibilities  
Emanating from this node  
And was entranced.  
I notified you.

_Avon:_      
But why not until now?  
And why is the now that now which SERVALAN occupies  
While she is in the place  
Why do she and I occupy the same time?

_Orac:_      
I have no answers.  
The information is not held  
On computer.

_Avon:_      
Even computers  
Are sightless  
Against the deformity of the flesh.  
The information is in a human brain  
Like water slopped around in a bucket.

_Cally:_  
AVON, come back up.  
It’s not worth it.

_Avon:_      
Nothing else is worth it.  
This thing is bigger than the Federation.

_Cally:_  
AVON.

_Avon:_      
You are blind.

**Avon casts aside his teleport bracelet and communicator.  He angles his gun down the passage.**  
                
 _Avon:_      
Servalan.  
She is here.

**Avon sets off at a run.**

24.  SERVALAN, GRAVARR, SERVANT OF GRAVARR.

**The doors slide back, revealing Servalan posed in her dress, hydraulic steam shooting up from the door joints to frame her with a dirty cloud.  Gravarr and his servant look up to regard her entrance, but the camera is behind their heads and we still cannot see their faces.**

_Servalan:_  
I believe, gentlemen, I have come to be offered power.  
That was I think the terms of our agreement.

_Gravarr:_  
I think you’re wrong about our bargain.  
I think you’ll find you’ve been mistaken.

_Servalan:_  
Oh, no mistake, as soon you’ll shortly find.  
With H-bombs I can have this planet burnt.

_Gravarr:_  
Somewhere roaming in this building  
There’s a man that you should meet.

**Servalan’s guards have caught up with her: they leap into the door-frame, dispelling the last tatters of dry ice, guns pointed at the alien menace; but something in Gravarr’s words has suddenly made Servalan uneasy.  Her hand seems both to rest upon her guards in an easy show of strength and hold them back, as if there was not so much there to rely on as she had at first and optimistically thought.**

25.  AVON.

**Avon has graduated to stealing his way through rooms.  He is heading inwards.**

26.  AVON, PRE-ADAMITE GUARD.

**Avon encounters two Pre-Adamite guards and shoots them before they can react.**

** ET IN ARCADIA EGO **

Here the fragment breaks off


End file.
